


The Light in Me Will Guide You Home

by ASassyDog, dreckish



Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: Drugs, Hallucinations, M/M, Sex, Sex in a Drug Haze
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2014-03-14
Packaged: 2018-01-15 15:18:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1309552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ASassyDog/pseuds/ASassyDog, https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreckish/pseuds/dreckish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How to exorcise your demons with Ambien and Pickles. [Written by ASassyDog, illustrated by dreckish.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Light in Me Will Guide You Home

**Author's Note:**

> For mullingarter as part of the 2014 Metalocalypse Exchangearooni.

_Fear is the brightest of signs_  
_The shape of the boundary you leave behind_  
_So sing all your questions to sleep_  
_The answers are out there in the drowning deep_

 

“I never took you as one for drugs,” Pickles says with a wry smile.

Charles looks taken aback, and shakes his head. “I only use them when I absolutely must, usually when I've had an extremely busy day. Today, for example.” Pickles has the decency to look sheepish.

The band had given Charles two days off to attend his younger sister's wedding, with him making them promise that nothing terribly out-of-hand would occur. That promise was kept for a grand total of seven hours, at which point they had decided that alcohol and groupies sounded like a good way to pass the next day and a half. After all, they reasoned (their promise to Charles utterly forgotten), there was nothing for them to work on and no one to nag them to work on something new, so what else were they to do to relieve their boredom?

Charles had returned to a mess. He didn't even bother to ask the Klokateer on duty why it hadn't been cleaned up; he just sighed, ordered a clean-up crew, checked the files for the Klokateers on duty at the time, and questioned them about the impromptu party the boys had held.

Instead of spending the day catching up on the inevitable back-up of paperwork and e-mails, Charles spent the day poring over the security tapes to identify the two dozen groupies for follow-up to make sure that they all signed paternity wavers. He'd then spent the rest of the night catching up on his other work, until the tell-tale pinpricks behind his eyes got too painful to ignore. He needed to sleep.

Pickles reaches over for the bottle to see what Charles' substance of choice is, but deft hands move it out of reach.

"What was theat fer? Why wontcha let me see what you're takin'? It's not like I'm gonna judge you or whatever."

"That's not, ah, my main concern, Pickles."

"So what are ya takin' then, if ya won't let me see?"

"It's simply something to help me sleep from time to time."

"Ooh, a guessin' game? What is it? Somethin' OTC? Clonazepam? Diazepam?"

"It's, ah, Ambien. Not a large dose, of course; just enough to help, ah, relax me."

"Ooh, Ambien. That's good stuff! Gives ya a helluva high if you manage to stay awake. Had a few good trips on it. Only I snorted it, but whatever, reet?"

"That's, well... It's unsurprising to hear from you, but not a use I'd considered for it, no. Now, unless there's something important you need--"

As soon as he sets the bottle on the nightstand, he realizes he's made a terrible mistake. Pickles dodges past him to swipe the bottle and eye it critically. Charles knows better than to try and snatch it back; all that would happen would be that Pickles would pitch a fit and instead of sleeping, he'd spend the next few hours calming and babying the drummer. He considers asking, but he doubts that asking, even nicely, is going to get him anywhere when Pickles and drugs are involved.

Charles does a brief headcount; there's only three ten-milligram pills left, slightly less than a week's worth for him and maybe half a trip for Pickles. This isn't a battle he's interested in fighting. Instead he sighs and waves Pickles away. "Do what you want with those. I was going to get a refill anyways." Pickles gives him a knowing grin and pops the top off the orange bottle. He swallows all three at once, dry, and declines Charles' offer of water.

Charles expects that Pickles will now wander off in search of some heavier fare to compliment his Ambien buzz, but instead he sits down on the small armchair next to the bed and props his feet up on the covers. Charles shuffles awkwardly, trying to decide whether or not it will bother Pickles if he gets into his own bed. In the end, he decides against it and simply sits on the edge, facing Pickles. He's starting to feel the effects of the five milligrams he's just taken, his sense of balance has fucked right off and he finds himself needing to shift backwards so he can prop himself against the headboard.

It was the one thing he hated about the meds: they ruined his sharpness, dulled his mental machinery to the point of being useless scrap. He only took it if he could be sure there were enough Klokateers staffed and little chance of a threat, and even then he would spend a decent chunk of time quietly debating with himself over whether it was necessary.

He shakes himself awake at the sound of Pickles' voice mumbling something about what a lightweight Charles is, and how Pickles is barely even feeling his own thirty milligrams.

"Why do you do it?"

Charles isn't sure what's come over him when he says it, isn't even sure what he's asking. But Pickles seems to decipher, all on his own, the meaning that eludes Charles' grasp.

Pickles laughs and says, “Why not? It makes things feel different, y'know? Vivid, really intense. Or if yer feeling too much, you can shut it down. Or replace it with a better feeling. A different one. Speakin' of feelings, y'know what I've heard about Ambien goin' well with?”

Charles isn't sure he wants to know what combination of substances Pickles is going to suggest, but the business part of his mind figures he can more easily monitor what Pickles is ingesting if he knows in advance.

“Fuckin' when you're on Ambien is supposed t'be great. Like, people'll take Ambien and wake up and find out they've been having tons of sex and were totally into it or something!”

He's not really expecting that, but on further consideration, it seems almost understandable. The Ambien, he realizes, must be getting to him.

“Please don't, ah, engage in any sex-related parasomnias. Hard to...keep up with the paperwork and the disclosure agreements and so forth--” Charles is cut off by a yawn. He can feel the fog settling behind his eyes, the weight pressing down under his skull.

Pickles rises and shuffles from one heel to another. Charles tries to see to the foot of the bed so he can figure out what Pickles is doing, but his question is answered when he sees a single gray sneaker fly across the room and hit the wall, leaving a greasy skid mark. Charles makes a mental note to get it cleaned in the morning, and then realizes he probably won't remember anything when he wakes up. Maybe that's why Pickles is shedding his clothes like snakeskin, slow peeling and still hanging from him in odd places.

Charles had told Pickles after his death that he couldn't afford to continue the way they were.

“I'm too busy, Pickles. Since I left--. There's simply no way to keep this going, Pickles. Things have changed.”

He can't tell Pickles about the visions, the creeping dread he feels, unexplainable, whenever he's alone with any one of them. He wonders if there's a medical reason for it—lack of oxygen to the brain that's fucked up the wiring in there. He's been to see a doctor, but they've found nothing. Finally, he'd gone to see Ishnifus, who had taken in Charles' concerns with a grimace and said only, “You will understand. They will not harm you, but I cannot explain more than that.”

He'd kept his one-on-one interactions with Pickles to a minimum since then, but it hadn't been easy. Pickles, hungry for validation and acceptance, came to him frequently, asking questions Charles wishes he knew the answers to. Gradually, the visits had grown more spread out, their conversations relegated to nothing more than band meetings and business.

But now Pickles is making his way onto the bed, eyes crinkled and mischievous, his reaching hands easily finding their target.

Pickles' is gripping the front of Charles' robe, sliding it off his shoulders, calloused fingers sandpapery against Charles' skin. Charles feels a tremble of fear, the dread looming out from the drug fog to meet Pickles' fingers.

But the Ambien is making the actual mental processing difficult, and even the fear is dulled. Charles hasn't had hands on him in too long—not intimately, much less sexually. He leans into Pickles' touch with only the briefest hesitation, a tremble in his shoulders that he just barely notices.

Pickles grins and slides his hands down Charles' chest, the rough pads of his fingers catching on strands of Charles' hair. Charles sighs and the anxiety lurches out from underneath the fog, one last attempt to wrap itself around his mind. “Not right now,” Charles wills, and it's gone, sinking back down to wherever it made itself at home.

His heart is going, going, his muscles twitching with anticipation; his mental acuity is dulled, but sensations are as strong as he's ever felt. Pickles is opening Charles' robe, watching him intently, waiting; he's become too accustomed to hearing “No.” But Charles lets him continue, the Ambien clouds blocking out the prized sunlight of reason.

He can't tell at first what the movement around Pickles' head is; Pickles' dreadlocks are moving but they don't match the shifting of the drummer's body as he leans down to grasp Charles' half hard cock.

“Ah,” he thinks. “These must be the hallucinations.” Pickles laughs and calls him a lightweight again. Charles was unaware he'd spoken.

His last experience with hallucinations had been at the time of his death: flashes of a humanoid monster he originally assumed was his own fear of death, a half-man come to greet him as he fell. Black tarry blood spilled from its lips as it hissed words in an unknowable language Charles hoped he'd never learn.

But these current hallucinations are just as vivid, too much so to be the workings of an overtired mind. There's a halo emerging around Pickles' head; at first seeming to grow from Pickles' dreadlocks and dimly illuminated by the bedside lamp. The closer he looks, though, the more he realizes the glow is less 60 watt light bulb and more eerie spectre in the night. Charles knows otherworldly, had seen it the night he died, and this is too similar: an ocean foam miasma circling Pickles' head.

He feels Pickles' hand stroking him easily, slick and warm, his grip sure and steady, but he can't recall if Pickles had gotten lube from the side table. The circle of dreads and light is expanding, unfurling like a fraying rope, eight segments sliding apart and untangling themselves from Pickles' hair, and the air around them smells of ocean and decaying fish and salt.

“You likin' this, Chief?”

He's looking up at Charles but Pickles' face is blocked by these tendrils, and they're becoming less and less like hair. They're more solid, and glistening now, swelling and changing shape—raised bumps and tapering ends. They're moving towards him, reaching for his neck, and for one dreadful moment, Charles can feel something, whatever's been left by the Half Man, clawing its way out of the heavy unfocused mist. It's roaring through his mind, clamorous and echoing, and something in Pickles is reacting to it.

He can see it now, eight aquatic tentacles, reaching for his throat, trying to wrap themselves around his neck to choke out what's left of the Half Man inside him. His heart is racing and his stomach and thighs are twitching as he fights the urge to vomit or run or fight back, but the octopus' reach is greater than the distance between them. They're tightening around his throat. He's struggling to breathe, reaching for Pickles, fighting for his life.

He releases a single strangled scream, eyes closing reflexively, and everything's gone—the tentacles, the light, the smell of brine and ocean have all left them. When he opens his eyes again, there's nothing there but Pickles, wiping his messy hands with a Kleenex and grinning up at him. Right before Charles loses consciousness, he hears Pickles' voice: “What'd I tell ya? Worth it or what?”

*

The roiling seas of his mind and belly are quiet when he awakens in the morning, clear skies and the warmth of safety and calm are all he can feel. He can't remember why Pickles is curled under his blankets, dreads fanned out around his head like a halo.

 

_Sail your sea_  
_Meet your storm_  
_All I want is to be your harbor_  
_The light in me_  
_Will guide you home_  
_All I want is to be your harbor_

-Vienna Teng, “Harbor”


End file.
